Great Western Coffee Shop

0833 from Charlbury, HST with 2 +half first class, buffet and missing a standard class (D), passengers standing before anyone from Charlbury even got on board. Why oh why do they do this, is it impossible to redesignate a first class carriage....plenty of space free in first.

How do you manage to lose a coach from the middle of the train?

Imagine though that you were in possession of a first class ticket, planning to join the train at the next station along. At that price, you (or your employer) should reasonably be able to expect at least a seat, a table to work from and somewhere to plug in your laptop. If the designated first class carriages are filled with displaced persons who have paid standard rate, I think you would justifiably feel a little aggrieved.

Coaches are removed from time to time for something called ....Maintainence... there a set floating about with 2 coach E s at the moment, and Carriage X has made a welcome return iam led to believe

Sounds a bit like a game of Scrabble (other word games are available): make a seven letter word, using the following letters - A B C E E X H  ::)

So they do not use the "spare" 180s during maintenance?

No because the bloody things always broke!!!.......

Well, 180102 and 104 (back from Oxley?) have been behaving themselves so far this week, coupled on 07.10 from Oxford and return ecs, seen both mornings at Oxford at 10am.

Must have been a bit of set-swapping going on during the day, as the 17.51 London-Worcester was a short-formed reverse rake (no coach C) while the 08.37 Worcester-London had been a full 2+8.

Anyway, for once, I feel it's in order to congratulate whoever in control or at Paddington organised this -presumably the 2+8 did a turn needing every seat - as the formation was absolutely spot-on to handle passengers numbers on the 17.51 to Oxford (four well-filled standards) with a bit less empty space being carried around beyond.

But maybe ought to note the 2+7 load did nothing for performance of the train, with a five-minute late start from Oxford (waiting for a Freightliner to pass) compounded by another five minutes lost to Moreton-in-Marsh - though not helped by some very early braking before stations, eg at Evenlode, three miles out from Moreton.

Not surprised, the idea that time can be saved by having less coaches is a myth. It must be such a minimal negligible difference.

It all depends on the driving. GNER coped with an extra HST coach.

It is a negligible difference - perhaps 5-10 seconds saved per station stop? However, if you're on a train with 15 stops that equates to to around two minutes.

HST power cars vary in performance too much for that to ever be reliably passed on to travellers though, and as you say, the drivers technique will make the biggest difference of all.

I have some figures on the extra time per station stop for varying lengths of trains on the East Coast main line in the (far-off) days when Deltics were in use. Train lengths varied between 8 and 12 coaches.

Over a distance of 100 miles, the 8-car train averaged 75 min start-to-stop while the 12-car train took 85 min - a difference of 10 minutes.

Over a distance of 20 miles (not very common on the East Coast), the equivalent figures were 19.5 and 20.5 minutes - just 1 minute of difference. So you're talking about 15 seconds per coach.

On the Cotswold line, the start-to-stop distances are less than 20 miles (and top speeds are lower than on the ECML), so 5-10 seconds sounds a very likely range. And that's well within the variation of the healthiness or otherwise of the power cars.

Thanks for that useful information, Worcester_Passenger!

From my experience, having had the misfortune to be standing down-wind of them at BTM, some of the HST power cars are not particularly healthy, in terms of their various emissions (cough, cough - pardon??)  ::)

So the conclusion is, have 8 coaches, well maintained engines and well trained drivers!

Indeed - and let's have that included in the next franchise specifications!  ;D

And certainly a demonstration of different driving technique on my journeys yesterday, both on a 2+8 set.

Good run on the 09.19 Moreton (08.37 Worcester) to London. Train arrived at Moreton at 09.16, and even after standing for a couple more minutes at Charlbury until the clock hit 09.38, we were sitting just outside Oxford, waiting for platform 1 to be cleared, at 09.53. Stopped in the station at 09.57, one minute early.

Similar effort on the way home on the 17.51 London-Shrub Hill (18.55 off Oxford). Couple of minutes late away, courtesy of Freightliner again, but back to time by Charlbury and even got a clear run into Moreton for once, so a minute or two early there - usually this train gets checked to a crawl for the last mile from the edge of town, as there is a train due from the Evesham direction at about the same time.

Suppose the operating rules for the signallers say watch out, so the train doesn't over-run the platform and foul the point where the single line starts, but I've never known a single driver do this at Moreton, on many journeys, over many years.

No, but it would only need to happen once and there would be the risk of a low-speed collision. The phrase 'at a stand or nearly at a stand' is the mantra the Signallers have to adopt to all three of the 'home' signals on the approach to the platform, when the section signal on the platform is at danger. The distance between signal and crossing is very small. Should all be a thing of the past soon when we have a nice double-track railway though!

Point taken, but surely the drivers all understand this anyway from learning the route, or can't they be trusted to drive appropriately? They presumably know full well where their crossing points on each service are.

My favourite piece of operating recently was when we were brought to a stop at the edge of town, then went at walking pace to the home signal next to the signal box, where we sat, 30 yards from the platform, while the 18.50 Worcester to Paddington arrived and departed. It was pretty frustrating and pretty silly and if we had been allowed straight to the platform, the train would have been at a stand for several minutes before the 18.50 turned up. Not sure I can put up with another two years of that kind of thing frankly.

It was like waiting outside Templecombe, though there they have the excuse there's only one track and one platform, as the double track starts just to the west - another ridiculous legacy of the geniuses in BR Western Region who drew up the single-tracking schemes, though I suppose they never thought anyone would want to reopen the station.